{"id":1160,"date":"2009-09-07T07:46:45","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T07:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2009-09-07T07:46:45","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T07:46:45","slug":"unions_doing_what_they_accuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1160","title":{"rendered":"Unions Doing What They Accuse Corporations Of Doing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/opinions\/2009\/09\/07\/2009-09-07_union_bigs_get_the_best_deals.html\">New York Daily News<\/a>&nbsp;posted an article on unions and pension funds.&nbsp; In the article, they cite the U. S. Labor Department statistics on pension funds and their funding.&nbsp; The article points out that in 2006 (the last year that&nbsp;data is available)&nbsp;&nbsp;only 17% of union-negotiated plans were fully funded, compared with 35% of nonunion plans.&nbsp; According to the article:<\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\">\n<p><em>&#8220;Under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, funds with less than 80% of assets are in &#8220;endangered&#8221; status. In 2006, 41% of union funds were &#8220;endangered,&#8221; compared with 14% of nonunion funds.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Thirteen percent of union funds had less than 65% of required assets, also called &#8220;critical&#8221; status by the Labor Department, while only 1% of nonunion plans were in critical shape.&#8221; <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The figures also show that in a sampling of the largest union retirement plans, the collectively bargained plans had 70 % of the money to meet their obligations, while the officers plan had 93 %.&nbsp; The SEIU (Service Employees International Union) was 74 % funded in 2007 and in 2009 filed under critical status with the US Labor Department.&nbsp; Meanwhile, there&nbsp;is a separate fund for the unions staff and officers.&nbsp; The staff pensions are 85% funded and the officers&#8217; pensions are 102 % funded.&nbsp; The article points out that all three of the SEIU funds are managed within a single trust, separately, but by the same people.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The union workers pay into their pension funds.&nbsp; They are promised their pensions, yet the only people who can be sure of those pensions are the officers.&nbsp; In my opinion, this seems to go&nbsp;against the whole reason unions were started.&nbsp; If the unions can manage to fund&nbsp;pensions for their officers (with rank and file money),&nbsp;why can&#8217;t they fund the pensions for their workers with the same kind of security?&nbsp; I&nbsp;would also like to point out that the SEIU is one of many unions who will receive a cash windfall if the Obama healthcare passes (see yesterday&#8217;s post).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s New York Daily News&nbsp;posted an article on unions and pension funds.&nbsp; In the article, they cite the U. S. Labor Department statistics on pension funds and their funding.&nbsp; The article points out that in 2006 (the last year that&nbsp;data &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1160\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}